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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23120029">Tsunade, the Childless Mother</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/akimikono/pseuds/akimikono'>akimikono</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Naruto</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Adopted Children, Blood and Gore, Blood and Injury, Blood and Violence, Gen, Graphic Description, Graphic Description of Corpses, Mother-Son Relationship, Post-War, Suicide, Team as Family, War, chosen family</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 05:54:56</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,764</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23120029</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/akimikono/pseuds/akimikono</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Tsunade never had children, but she's a mother nonetheless. </p>
<p>Original prompt: Imagine Tsunade was the one that washes Sakumo's blood off Kakashi. Imagine when she came back to Konoha finally and healed him in the hospital, she didn't say anything but she was happy to see her brat again. Imagine Tsunade had always been looking out for Kakashi as a mother figure and that's why she was pissed off when Kakashi died in the Pein's assault. Imagine in Tsunade's eyes. Kakashi had always been a tiny brat.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Hatake Kakashi &amp; Tsunade</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>149</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Tsunade, the Childless Mother</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nika/gifts">Nika</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>From a prompt sent to me by my friend Nika. This was written 2 years ago but I just found it again! Originally posted on my Tumblr (sufferthesea). </p>
<p>Original prompt: Imagine Tsunade was the one that washes Sakumo's blood off Kakashi. Imagine when she came back to Konoha finally and healed him in the hospital, she didn't say anything but she was happy to see her brat again. Imagine Tsunade had always been looking out for Kakashi as a mother figure and that's why she was pissed off when Kakashi died in the Pein's assault. Imagine in Tsunade's eyes. Kakashi had always been a tiny brat.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There is blood everywhere, but mostly it’s covering the floor and the little boy kneeling in the puddle of it that’s coming out of his father’s stomach. He’s crying and his shoulders are shaking as he frantically pushes his tiny hands against the gaping wound, thinking his little fingers can sprout needles and thread and sew up the guts that are spilling out onto the hardwood floor. He’s not a medical nin. He’ll never be a medical nin. That’s Rin’s job, but Rin isn’t here and he’d never want her to see something like this. <em>He </em>never wanted to see something like this. But he’s the one who stumbled upon his father’s crumpled body lying on the ground; he’s the one who pulled the tanto from his father’s stomach; he’s the one who has to save his father, because no one else can.</p>
<p>Kakashi spends six hours trying to push the split skin of his father’s stomach back together, but his hands keep slipping in the blood and he cries harder when the blood turns from red to brown to black and his breath nearly stops when he realizes the skin he’s touching is cold, colder than the sleeting rain outside drumming against the windows and roof. He doesn’t eat, doesn’t sleep, doesn’t stop. Six hours and he’s nowhere closer to saving Sakumo than he was when he started, and when morning breaks, he’s still kneeling on sore knees, his face buried in his father’s shoulder, sobbing dryly.</p>
<p>Tsunade is the next to arrive. She doesn’t know how or why, but she feels drawn to the Hatake house and when she steps inside after receiving no answer to her knock, she hears the cries and knows something is wrong. When she finds Kakashi curled up into Sakumo’s stiff arms, her mind seems to shut off and instead of being horrified at the sight of a five-year-old covered in his father’s blood, she strides over purposefully and scoops up a wailing Kakashi into her arms and promptly leaves the house. She’ll send somebody to get Sakumo. She just needs to take care of the child.</p>
<p>At the hospital, she is stone-faced and no nurse nor doctor dares to cross her path as she bustles Kakashi into a bathroom and fills a tub with hot, soapy water and scrubs the dried blood off every inch of his body. He’s still crying, but more of a blubber than a sob, and his hair is stained pink despite Tsunade nearly tearing his hair out with the effort of cleaning it. She rinses him off three times and when he’s wrapped in a towel, skin blistered from the scalding hot water she hopes will purify him - his body, his mind, his memories - she pulls him into a tight hug and whispers so many apologies and promises that she’s not even sure she can keep. But it doesn’t matter now; she just needs Kakashi to know it’ll be okay.</p>
<p>But Tsunade can’t stay - doesn’t want to stay - and she leaves the village and Kakashi is left alone in his family house, but the room, <em>that room</em>, is boarded up in his mind and he never steps foot in there again. He doesn’t blame Tsunade for leaving. He blames his father for it, though. He’s only five but he knows fathers are supposed to be there for you and a Sannin has no obligation to a child.</p><hr/>
<p>The next time Tsunade sees Kakashi, she’s older and skeptical and angry. She doesn’t want to be Hokage. But she needs to come back, to heal Kakashi. To take care of him the same way she’d taken care of him so many years ago. She’s never forgotten the tiny, trembling body in her arms from that night, but she’s forgotten that children age and grow up and become adults. When she steps into the hospital and sees Kakashi, a man and not a toddler, she almost stops dead in her tracks because he looks so much like him - like Sakumo, even with the mask. But she tells herself it’s not him; it’s the child left behind. It’s the little brat she’d seen throughout the village for the five years leading up to that night. The know-it-all. The prodigy. The genius. But here he doesn’t seem like any of those. He just seems weak and in pain and tired. She says nothing as she heals him; doesn’t bring up the past or the future; doesn’t ask him if he remembers something similar happening almost twenty years ago. It doesn’t matter now; she just needs Kakashi to be okay.</p>
<p>Tsunade heals him as she said she’d do, but her hands shake the entire time. It’s just a small tremor, and surely no one has noticed it. She never thought she’d be so thankful to see Kakashi’s hair as stark silver-white as the day he was born. She never wants to see it stained pink again. When Kakashi catches her eye and sees the softness and worry in it, she sets her face into a scowl and berates him for being foolish and nearly getting himself killed. He knows what he did wrong, and he’ll do better to fix it next time. He doesn’t know how to thank Tsunade; he’s not even sure if he can. He’s only ever known his father but he can’t help but think this type of reprimanding is like a mother’s. But Tsunade has no children and he’s a full-grown man, so he pushes that idea out of his mind and accepts it as the future Hokage scolding him for being a weak shinobi.</p><hr/>
<p>During the war, a lot of people die. It’s inevitable. But Tsunade holds out hope that the Leaf Village will be okay, that <em>her</em> people will be okay. They have to be. She’s sent out all of them. She needs them all back. She is their Hokage; they trust her, follow her, believe in her. She has to take care of them.</p>
<p>When the news comes of death, it is no surprise. Another dozen shinobi, gone. Another division, wiped out. Casualties. Losses. The numbers grow and so does her fear. Then it comes. The news she has been dreading since the beginning. Kakashi. It’s him. He’s gone. Dead. Killed in an attack by Pein. And that’s exactly what Tsunade feels: pain. In her chest, in her stomach, in her head. She’s angry and confused and upset. It feels like her stomach has dropped out from under her and she’s opened up her body to the wind to dry her out into a husk; for the stench of bodies piled in the streets to infect her; for her mind to rot in the filth of her guilt.</p>
<p>She was supposed to protect him. Yes, he was strong and capable and immensely skilled - but he was still young, younger than her, younger than many people who went out to fight. To her, he is still that five-year-old child curled up in the blood of his father, wracked with grief, throat raw from screaming, eyes swollen shut from endless tears. She isn’t sure if he’d ever be anything other than that child to her. Helpless, scared, abandoned. She wonders if that’s how he felt only moments ago, before he was killed. What went through his mind as his enemy advanced and he was defenseless. Where was everyone else? Why did this happen? For a brief moment she curses the entirety of the shinobi system and for an even briefer moment she wonders why it couldn’t have been somebody else in Kakashi’s place.</p>
<p>Tsunade is almost reckless in her own mind with the news and her thoughts race about what she could do, should do, could’ve done. It’s too late. There’s nothing but pushing forward and seeing things through to the end. And so she continues to fight for the village - for that five-year-old with the blood-stained hair - for the stiff body of Sakumo carried out by ANBU in porcelain masks - for the orphans fighting the same war that made them orphans in the first place.</p>
<p>And when it’s all over, and Tsunade sees that familiar wave of silver-white hair, she almost collapses with relief. Even if it’s only a ghost, she’s relieved she gets to see him again. She cries when she realizes he’s real. It’s unbecoming of the Hokage, but she doesn’t care. His hair is white. His lungs are filled with air. He’s walking towards her with his own two feet, not gliding like the wisps of a cloud. His eyes roam over her shaking form and he drops down next to her. She looks half-way between happy and pissed off and before he can do anything, she pulls him into a hug and sobs into his hair.</p>
<p>“You’re okay,” she mutters over and over, like some ancient chant she learned in her studies. “You’re okay. You’re okay.” It melts into an incoherent mumble soon and all he can understand is that her lips are moving against his scalp and her nails are digging into his shoulders. He wonders if she knew what happened to him, or if she is just thankful that he returned more-or-less unharmed. He doesn’t see the point in telling her the details of his fight, or his death. Judging from her state, she wouldn’t be able to handle a single sound from him. So he says nothing. He just lets her kiss the side of his head, holding him tighter and tighter, and mumble her regret against his forehead. She’s trembling uncontrollably and the only thing Kakashi can think of to do is to hug her back, and it feels strange hugging the Sannin - the Hokage. It’s strange feeling this contact after being revived from the dead. It’s strange feeling this contact in general. He’s never allowed it. But he doesn’t think Tsunade cares much for his personal preferences at the moment.</p>
<p>Her head falls to his shoulder and she continues to cry, though he knows it’s more than just for him. It’s for everyone that’s been lost, in this war and the previous ones. Jiraiya. Minato. Dan. Nawaki. There’s been too many deaths and Tsunade feels the pain of them all. Understanding her guilt and her fear, Kakashi wraps his arms around her tighter and lets her empty herself of everything she’s kept in since before the war started. He knows soon she’ll have to collect herself, address the remaining shinobi, take a body count, and rebuild the village. But it doesn’t matter now; right now he just needs Tsunade to be okay.</p>
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